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Forgiveness is abandoning your right to revenge.

Desmond Tutu

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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Right
Abandoning
Revenge
Forgiveness
Politics

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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I will never tell anyone to pick up a gun. But I will pray for the man who picks up a gun, pray that he will be less cruel than he might otherwise have been.
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True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.
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Each one of us can be an oasis of peace.
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Human beings are fundamentally good.
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We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.
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Each of us has a God-shaped space within us. Only God can fill that space. But we run ourselves ragged trying to find things other than God to fill it with.
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Sometimes you want to whisper in God's ear, God, we know you are in charge, but why don't you make it slightly more obvious?
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Serve others. The failing recipe for happiness and success is to want the good of others. happiness is when I see others happy. Happiness is a shared thing. I feel very diminished happiness if it is something I enjoy myself.
Desmond Tutu
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It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.
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Ubuntu tells us that we can create a more peaceful world by striving for goodness in each moment, wherever we are.
Desmond Tutu
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We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.
Desmond Tutu
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This is a moral universe, which means that, despite all the evidence that seems to be to the contrary, there is no way that evil and injustice and oppression and lies can have the last word.
Desmond Tutu
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Of course, you've got to reckon with the burden of the past. You can't just easily dismiss it. It is a legacy and often you have to carry an albatross. And it won't happen until people are able to have a certain level of trust and try to speak to each other, not as caricatures but as people.
Desmond Tutu
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I have often said to my Jewish friends: Please just remember where you come from. Remember Yahweh, who said to the Israelites, 'Treat the alien well with justice.' Almost all of the passion that we have has come from the inspiration that we have got from the Jewish Scriptures.
Desmond Tutu
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There are very few institutions that give prizes to people who may not have got to be number one, but are possibly better at coaxing the best out of others.
Desmond Tutu
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There are levels of poverty in South Africa that are totally unacceptable.
Desmond Tutu
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Most poor people I know are proud and really want not a handout but a hand up. They do have an inherent pride and dignity, and we should treat them as those who have fallen on bad days.
Desmond Tutu
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If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.
Desmond Tutu
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God has such a deep reverence for our freedom that he'd rather let us freely go to Hell than be compelled to go to Heaven.
Desmond Tutu
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Forgiveness and reconciliation are not just ethereal, spiritual, other-worldly activities. They have to do with the real world. They are realpolitik, because in a very real sense, without forgiveness, there is no future.
Desmond Tutu